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Monday, May 7, 2012

Odds & Ends

I've been out of pocket the last few days and have not done any posting. I just have a couple of odds and ends to contribute today....

First- Apple'sPhoto Stream. This is really cool! ( that is to say, it's cool if you are an iPhone / iPad / iPhoto user ) In case you're not familiar... Photo Stream is a part of Apple's iCloud. It's a very simple way to share your iPhone photos to your iPad, Mac, or to other iPhone users on your account.

Here's how it works. Just go into your iCloud settings and turn on the Photo Stream. Now when you take photos with your iPhone, or add photos to the Camera Roll, those photos will automatically be copied to your Photo Stream album in the cloud. (photos will only go up to the cloud when connected to wifi) When you open the Photo Stream album on your iPad or in iPhoto, your latest iPhone pics are there! This works great if you have other iPhone users on your iCloud account. For example.... My wife and I use the same iCloud account so we can share pictures automatically. When either of us takes a photo with our iPhone, the photo automatically appears in the Photo Stream which we can view via iPhone or iPad. It's great when I'm traveling and she wants to share new pics of the kiddos. She doesn't have to email me the photos, they just magically appear in my Photo Stream. The Photo Stream will keep only your last 1000 photos, so it is not a replacement for permanent backup. But it's easy and free, so I like it.

Second- A quick portrait tip..... The camera looks both ways. You've possibly heard this, or perhaps some other rendition of it before. It's a commonly shared tip because it's very very true. Your mood, expression, and emotion will be reflected by your subject, just like a mirror. This is especially true when photographing kids. If you want joyous, laughing, excited, smiley expressions- you've got to set the tone. It's not 100% effective 100% of the time, but it's close.

Lastly- Here's a photo of a friend and her daughter that I took last Fall. Taken at my favorite time of day, the early evening sunlight angling in from behind them is providing the accent lighting. Fill light is coming in from my speed light positioned camera left. And I think I have mentioned before that some of my favorite portraits are the ones in which the subjects are not looking at the camera.....